A Flash of Darkness
by moonswirl
Summary: Gleekathon, day eight hundred and fifteen: It only takes one moment for the nightmare to take her, and she might forget it's not real.


_Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 38th cycle. Now cycle 39!_

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><p><em><strong>INTRODUCING "CHEAT SHEET" - <strong>If you want to know ahead of time when a certain series will be updated next, just reassemble the link below and check out the list, save it, print it, bookmark it, whatever you need!  
>Go to: <span>gleekathon [dot] tumblr [dot] com [slash] cheatsheet<span>_

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><p><strong>"A Flash of Darkness"<br>Santana/Brittany  
>(this story was inspired by an idea from the very awesome <em>kempokarate12<em>, love ya darlin'! :)) **

She was like a genius when she was drunk, or hung over… Her mind went places it didn't usually go. That could be a blessing… or a curse.

After Rachel's party, the weekend had been all about staying out from under her mother's gaze before she could see how messed up she still was. Then she was back at school, hiding again with the help of sunglasses and a… refresher. Then they were right back at it, performing a number for alcohol awareness week for Schuester. She was doing her damn best not to let her 'condition' on, even if some… others… were this close to selling them out.

But then Rachel said something. It wasn't anything she was unfamiliar with, they'd made her watch videos and all that, about dangers, designated drivers, but then this was where her brain would go to a nasty, twisty little place.

It happened in an instant, a million images just shooting into her eyes, each of them pricking with fire, like… what if it was her, and… what if it happened to her? It wasn't herself as Santana that was placed in that mythical 'her' slot…

What if it was Brittany?

They were just as responsible as the next girl, but she knew there could be… not exceptions, more like lapses in judgement. She knew that girl more than anyone in her life. She could close her eyes and make her live like a picture drawn from her own hand. She could create her smiles – she knew them well – just like she could trace how her face crumbled around her tears – she would have erased them if she could. She knew it all, so she could imagine it all. And now this was placed in the hands of her inebriated mind, and together they created nightmare art.

She saw her eyes, sparkling blue stars. She saw her smile, the one that came from being absolutely free and living. She saw her hands, her fingers swiftly dancing along the steering wheel… She saw her drunk, saw her sober, saw both… A million images in a split second and they still had time to weave in alternate scenarios. Sometimes she was alone, sometimes she, Santana, was with her… passenger, driver, that alternated, too.

But the next part… the next part it happened in each scenario, a whole array of those same images that ushered in the nightmare… a light…

Light… Light was supposed to be a good thing, light… light at the end of the tunnel, morning after night, all good things… But here it was the beginning of the end, here the light carried the darkness on its heels. Here it flashed on those features she knew like no others and with a deafening horn it brought catastrophe.

The next images had nothing of light, nothing delicate and sparkling. Here sounds were muted and too loud at once and they were frightening… frightened… Breaths, cries, creaking, and complete stillness after a cacophony…

The colors were all wrong and there was a blurry quality to everything… Red… Abundance of red, too much… It wasn't like the red on her Cheerios uniform, it was all wrong, not where it belonged…

It didn't belong on her head, in her hair, on her arms, it was everywhere, and it made her, Santana, forget this wasn't real, it was just too stark.

And then what happened? She wasn't moving, eyes were fixed, staring… They were still blue but the sparkle was gone, robbed away… She'd been smiling a moment ago, smiling… smiling… crash… She'd been afraid, for just a moment, and then she'd disappeared.

Sometimes she was alone, sometimes they were together. She, Santana, she never died. If she was there in those images then she had to lay there, broken and wrong but always alive, always seeing… her… Her hand would try and reach for her, like it would change reality. Sometimes she'd be alone, and the silence would make it even worse.

It should have been the end, no more images, but her mind was not done with her. It showed her the parts after and the life to be lived without her, the sadness gripping everyone else, too… But all she saw was emptiness, numbness…

Her eyes burned with the million images, and with that came tears, uncontrollable and without mercy. Suddenly she had control of her own vision again, and she saw Schuester asking if she was alright. She mumbled yes, tried to look away…

Her arms were around her and with them there came her warmth and her life… She was here, right here, right again… alive and unharmed and the tears were not so easy to convince.

She was shaking, she knew she was. Brittany was there, holding her, but it didn't mean she knew how to forget what she had seen. She could hear her talking in her ear, asking if she was alright… Now if she could just keep talking, keep letting her voice kill the silence and remind her, Santana, that she was there and that the nightmare had been just that and nothing more…

She couldn't tell her what she'd just seen, what she'd imagined. It was her terror, and she didn't want to put Brittany through it, too. Her mind was all bright and light, she wasn't about to corrupt it with the kind of light that betrayed you. Still she felt like she had to say something, something to protect her, to open her eyes without letting the nightmare in.

But then she wasn't all powerful. There were other things, factors that could take the power away. Just because she talked to Brittany, then that would take care of them, yes, but what about all the others? It would never end… She controlled nothing.

All she knew was her… She knew her eyes, her smiles, her tears… She cherished them… But she knew her heart as well… It was in charge of all of her. And she knew in that girl's heart there was a place all for her… She knew, and she had that space, for Brittany, in her own heart… She loved her, she knew it or else the nightmare would never have been able to find its way in.

She'd calm down eventually… This was the booze brain talking, she knew, but… oh, what if, what if… The images were trying to get her again… They would never go away completely, her own burden to bear for love's sake… For her, she could do it, no choice in the matter.

THE END

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><p><strong><strong>AN: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.  
><strong>**In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are  
><strong>******always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!********


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